Loving the fest at Lovefest

Kaitlin Perry / Arts & Culture Editor / The USD Vista

Traveling to San Francisco is no simple feat. I first took a train to Los Angeles, which was scary. Then I drove for an hour to my hometown of Ventura, Calif. and was attacked by my small, chubby puppy-sized dogs. In the morning I met up with my two friends to take a roadtrip to Berkeley to visit our other friend and subsequently attend Lovefest.

Because of my small stature I was forced to sit in the middle seat of the pickup truck, and, trust me, it was far, very far, from comfortable. There was no headrest and no breathing room. But it was chill. Once we got to our friends adorably rustic house, we proceeded to celebrate and walk all over the city. My body had never suffered more, until the next day.

Our journey to Lovefest, which took place in downtown San Fran, consisted of traveling on the Bart, which was a 20 minute ride involving standing and balancing and holding on to things. Lovefest was, as you might think, pretty wild and crazy and cool but also quite damaging to the body.

The cool part about it, besides the nudity, was the floats. Each float had a different dj and theme and the music was pure ecstasy. But dancing non-stop for eight hours is, again, quite damaging to the body.

The day after Lovefest was pure traveling. From car to bus to Bart to legs to truck I was constantly on the move. But on the ride back, yet again in the middle seat of the tiny truck, I realized how inspirational traveling can be.
Luckily my friends and I have identical taste in music. We listened to Why? and Modest Mouse mostly, with some Belle and Sebastian and Ratatat every once in a while, and I grew to appreciate the music even more than I already did, which I did not think was possible.

A lot of Modest Mouse songs are about traveling and the road and cars and thinking. Songs like that always make me think too much. And Why? is just so crazy that I can’t help but let my thoughts wander and swirl. Thanks to Lovefest, however, my thoughts were ridiculously grateful. I was grateful for having a job to fund my expensive weekend trip, grateful for having such wonderful friends, grateful for the beauty that I witnessed driving through northern California to southern California and grateful for the thought-provoking music that I was able to appreciate, despite the fact that my brain wasn’t functioning as well as it usually does.

Some things that I realized: the middle seat isn’t that bad when you’re surrounded by people that love you, there’s an In-N-Out at pretty much every freeway exit and Why? is the best band ever.